Hacker News Reader

Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

So retool, windmill.dev, airplane.dev and now this one. All YC backed. Very interesting. I wonder what YC thinks when they fund similar companies in such a short span of time.

EDIT/correction: airplane is not YC backed but one of the founders is YC Alumni

View on HN

(Airplane founder here) Airplane isn't YC backed. Though interestingly my prior startup, Heap, went through YC and has tons of YC-backed competitors (Amplitude, Mixpanel, Posthog, etc).

Personally I like that YC remains agnostic to the ideas and is willing to back competitors because it ultimately means more great startups get funded. Later-stage investors care more about conflicts because being involved at the level of taking a board seat matters a lot more for conflicts.

At this point they've backed 1000s of companies; if they had to vet that entire list for conflicts to back their next batch it would be incredibly difficult. Also, given the stage they're investing at, tons of companies pivot and end up competing even if they didn't start out that way.

YC likes the idea.

They're betting on multiple teams so they have a higher chance of picking the winners.

Not sure if this is what you're implying, but I think it's a mistake to think of YC as a monolithic organization that makes decisions by saying, "idea X is good, we should fund teams doing it."

More likely, each of the teams doing each of these startups interviewed with completely different partners who had no idea of the other startups even existing, and in that interview, they thought the founders seemed solid and had thought through their idea well, and chose to fund it. It's even possible some of the people doing these ideas came up with the idea after they got into YC (i.e. they pivoted) - some of the most successful YC startups were companies that pivoted mid-batch (e.g. Brex).

In general YC doesn't want multiple shots on goal in a specific market area. They want as many shots on goal as possible among great founders in general.

I dont work for YC but let me share my two cents. It might look similar, but all companies have their own journey, their own insights. In the end out stick to their conviction, pivot to another thing or execute really well or not so well and die. I think YC understands this so they are backing the founders.

Whether you like it or not, you as an org need a tool like this. Concept like these exist since the dawn of enterprise software. Why not bet on all the companies in the space. There will be one winner that covers all the losses.

Only critic I have for onu, is that their tagline is exactly same as the other tools in the space.

Edit: I just checked out their docs. They are basically doing what airplane's first iteration was. I think it is a hard sale. I guess founder of airplane could shed more light.

Retool was the first-mover and one of these is trying to be "the" open-source alternative to it.

*open-core

I think this is closer to streamlit and pynecone. Retool is lo code and very different imo.

airplane.dev itself is not YC backed, but one of the founder is a YC alumni

They think the same as someone buying SPX that has many similar companies in the index.

The less snarky answer is that each companies is run by creative people who will see different opportunities and pivot differently: they are not all the same company copying each other

An investment firm is hedging its investments. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

And Retool.

YC thinks that the space will grow, and it wants to have the winner.

Don't forget n8n.

Also Pynecone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com